Sole Society’s chat team answers your SOS

From the top of your head to the soles of your feet, Sole Society makes it easy to look great. The ecommerce site provides high quality shoes, bags, and accessories at a reasonable price. If you get stuck on their website finding the perfect pair of pumps, just click on SOS live chat to connect with a knowledgeable service agent.

“We want to make sure that we are able to provide service across all channels that currently exist,” explained Mia Chapa, the Customer Care Manager at Sole Society. “Social media, chat, e-mail, phone—they’re all very important. But live chat is easier for our customers, and for us.”

In fact, there’s a link to SOS Live Chat in the upper left-hand corner of every Sole Society page. In their case, SOS stands for “Style Or Service”, and contacts through this channel account for about 25 percent of the company’s communication with customers. When customers select live chat, they can choose between SOS Service, which connects them to an agent with generalized and technical skills, or SOS Style, which connects them with a style specialist, for questions about style and fit. Segmenting chat this way allows Sole Society to address the two major areas where customers request help and advice.

A common worry about live chat is the potential for chat abandonment, thus wasting agents’ time. “Our chat abandonment rate started out at about 13%,” Chapa said. “But in our first months using Zendesk Chat, it dropped to 7%, and now we have it all the way down to 3%.”

Chapa shared that live chat has really helped Sole Society serve their customers’ needs more quickly and conveniently. “I honestly don’t think that there should be any fear around chat. It provides a better, low-effort support experience for customers. It also helped decrease volume on other channels.” Currently, about 50 percent of contacts are phone calls, and the remaining half is split evenly between email and live chat.

When she went looking for customer service software, Chapa wanted something that was easy to use and intuitive for both agents and customers. After trying a few different options, she decided that Zendesk was exactly what she wanted. “I liked that I could train myself how to use Zendesk products,” Chapa said. “I also liked that I had the option to keep all our customer service channels under one roof, so to speak.”

Sole Society uses Zendesk integrations to make customer support flow seamlessly. “Our Zendesk products are also tied to our ecommerce platform, Magento,” Chapa explained. “It’s more efficient for the agent to get the ticket and be able to see the customer’s information and purchase history right away.” Furthermore, Chat allows agents to see where new customers are on the site and what items they are considering.

Chapa especially appreciates that her team is able to deliver a consistent level of service with the agents and stylists she has now. “Currently, all agents are cross-trained to provide support across all channels.” She added that she rotates agents through different roles and ensures that one or two agents are always on chat. This keeps the agents organized and provides the highest standard of customer support no matter how the customer gets in contact.

Live chat is becoming the most preferred channel. Check out our latest Benchmark Report to find out why

This is a blog post about how to use live chat as a channel for customer service and/or sales support. Please visit www.zendesk.com/chat if you’d like to learn more about Zendesk Chat, a live chat software tool that is used by tens of thousands of customers worldwide.